Bob, do you remember our undergraduate university days when we so hated those long boring lectures to which we were subjected term after term, and later, during graduate school, how we listened to yet more dull and pedantic lectures in the form of interminable conference papers and colloquia? How our beloved Philosophy seemed to have been transformed by our professors into a series of insufferable monologues! Don't misunderstand me, there is a place for monologue in the dissemination of ideas: if one is presenting a system of some sorts, it is probably best that it be presented in a coherent and univocal narrative. Yet so much of philosophy deals with obscure and uncertain subjects about which it is nearly impossible to achieve total solidarity of opinion. This is especially the case in the philosophy of religion. This is why (and I'm sure you will agree) that such matters as the existence and nature of the deity and the origins of religious belief are best presented in the form of a lively conversation or dialogue, which can combine the pleasure of good company with the serious sobriety of academic study and debate.

To this end I pass on to you a transcript of what transpired between three of my scholarly friends over a few pints in a local pub. I've typed this from a tape of the conversation I found on my pocket tape recorder, which spontaneously began to register when, early on in the conversation, voices hit extreme decibel levels. So as not to embarrass my friends, I have given them aliases with which you will, no doubt, be familiar. The tape starts in mid-sentence with Philo's remarks on the current state of religious belief. And please remark, Bob, on the carefree but rigid scepticism of Philo, the unorthodox pragmatism of Demea, and the accurate if somewhat jovial philosophical turn of Cleanthes.

Philo: ...well, come on now, Demea, it strikes me that you want to have your cake and eat it too. How can you realistically claim that modern science hasn't had a deeply corrosive effect on religious belief? Or at least made the popular notion of god so thin and diffuse that it amounts to little more than a warm and fuzzy feeling in the breast of the believer?

Demea: My dear Philo - obviously religious belief is alive and well in the western world. There is a church on every street corner and religious issues such as the death penalty, and abortion continue to be hotly debated. Despite the advances of science, many people abide in their faith. Perhaps you think that given the progress of modern science, religious belief should be breathing its death rattle. This is because you mistakenly assume that scientific and religious belief have the same function - to explain the mysteries of the universe. This is not true. The vocabularies of science and religion fulfill completely different needs in the human psyche and as a result many people continue to find religious vocabulary useful. Don't you agree Cleanthes?

Cleanthes: Philo, you do have some philosophical background which should be sufficient to realize that you should support some of your claims before uttering them as self-evident truths. Instead of asking how religious belief could be compatible with modern science, perhaps you should begin by explaining exactly how "modern science" has corroded religious belief. With such an explanation we may then see why religious belief, as a "warm and fuzzy" feeling, is so terrible!

As for your thoughts on the subject Demea, while I agree with your position over the different functions of religion and science, my philosophical training raises suspicions with your first remark. I am not sure what we can assume from the prevalence of churches (and one should add temples, synagogues, and the like) and the fact that many people hold to religious beliefs - some of which are clearly weird. Although interesting from a sociological point of view, it is difficult to say what this phenomena proves. (By the way Philo, don't take what I've said to mean that this manifestation is unimportant. We merely have to be clear about how it is to be interpreted.)

Demea: The prevalence of churches, synagogues, temples, mosques, sacred circles, and other places of worship, weird or mainstream, proves merely that in spite of the progress of science, many people continue to find a use for religion. The claim that God is dead can be dismissed as a humanist fantasy. This fact should surprise no one because religion does not have the same function as science - the two do not serve the same purpose.

Cleanthes: I agree, for the most part, with your criticism of a scientism that too easily brushes aside religious belief. My point is only that the prevalence of religion in society says little about the justification they have for holding to their religious beliefs. Simply because a lot of people believe something, it does not necessarily mean those beliefs are true.

Philo: Let me intervene here. What I meant to say with my "sociological" point is not that many people no longer gather together in churches, but that the meaning of this gathering has radically changed in the last generation or so. These gatherings are becoming less and less expressive of a coherent and monolithic Christian community of belief. There are indeed large numbers of old-fashioned believers; but there are even larger numbers of vaguely spiritual non-dogmatists and of total non-believers. But let's not dally too long within the earthy realms of sociology, but move on to the larger historical phenomena of decline and fall of the Christian hegemony of belief to the point where Nietzsche could declare in the 1880s that God is dead.

Demea: Both of you are quite right. Cleanthes, it is absolutely true that the prevalence of religious institutions in no way justifies religious belief. Philo, one cannot deny that the face of religion has changed in the Western world and that the religious climate is considerably more liberal than it was say, in the Middle Ages. Many twentieth century Christians are tolerant of science, homosexuals, and infidels, although many remain steadfastly conservative and intolerant.

Cleanthes: I think, Demea, if you are speaking about the Canadian scene you would be quite right. But this description is not very accurate when it comes to describing current American religious sentiment. Conservative Christianity still has a powerful voice in American society, whether massing men together as "prayer partners," fighting for "family values," or fighting against rights for homosexuals and open access to abortion. While American religious sentiment remains tied to conservative Christianity (with high church attendance in the evangelical/fundamentalist churches, belief in traditional creeds), Canadian religious sentiment is quite different. Although the majority of Canadians believe in some sort of supreme being, our churches are emptying, and new sources of spirituality are being explored.

Demea: I think it is true that the trend in Canada is toward liberalization, whereas in the U.S. one faction of the population is becoming more liberal, while other groups have become much more conservative. The obvious question to ask at this point is why have so many in North America abandoned traditional religious beliefs? Why have so many Christians become less insistent on a literal reading of scripture? Why is there a greater tendency to read holy scripture metaphorically? Surely much of this is the result of the Enlightenment and the progress of science. The success of science in explaining the mysteries of the universe and predicting the behavior of the world has forced people to integrate both their scientific and religious faith into their general web of beliefs. Religious people who believe in evolution, for instance, will typically read Genesis metaphorically such that it coheres with their literal belief in evolution. Others, of course, will reject evolution and continue to read Genesis literally.

Cleanthes: What we need to do is understand why religious belief, on the one hand, is reverting to a reinvigorated conservatism, and yet on the other hand, to a significant extent, is evolving into a new sense of spirituality.

Philo: Cleanthes' point is well taken. But if I might be allowed to steer our discussion somewhat away from the sociology of religion toward its justification (or lack thereof), my dear Demea, once again you are trying to make the weaker cause appear the stronger. You're lucky there aren't any Athenian statesmen present to make you sip the hemlock for your heterodox beliefs. Sensible people don't believe in creationism because they can hop in their cars, drive to the Alberta badlands, and see with their own eyes million-year-old dinosaur skeletons. Regardless of what theory of truth you adhere to, this sort of evidence counts so strongly against the creationist's "narrative" of the history of the world that it simply can't be ignored. The biblical account of the Deity's six days of hard work at global genesis simply cannot be squared with the bones of Albertosaurus.⁽¹⁾

Demea: Philo, although it is true that the discovery of dinosaur bones and theories about the big bang seem to fly in the face of creationist theories of human origin, let me remind you that the creationist and the scientific narratives do not do the same kind of work. They are essentially written in two incompatible languages for different purposes. The creationist narrative addresses questions that deal with meaning and purpose, whereas the scientific narrative describes the physical state of the world. The creationist narrative answers questions like "Why are human beings here?" and "What explains our current state of unhappiness?" and "What can be done to achieve happiness?" Moreover, the use of parable and metaphor abound in holy scripture. It can be read as a long poem.

Cleanthes: I am beginning to feel like a mosquito at a nudist colony. I don t quite know where to begin.

Philo, I think that much of the problem here is that, when it comes to the theory of evolution, you take both creationists and scientists too seriously. By taking the creationists too seriously, you make the mistake of thinking that because you show their thinking on creation to be flawed, you have shown Christianity, en totale, to be flawed. Put another way, just because creationists may be wrong about the origin of the universe and Albertan dinosaurs (perhaps they were Manitoban!), it hardly follows that they (or other Christians who are not creationists) are completely unjustified in having their belief about the existence of God.

By taking what scientists say about evolution too seriously, one can overlook the importance of theory. Fair-minded scientists, despite the good evidence for evolution, still point out that evolution is a theory. Simply put, one sees skeletons, but most certainly not millions of years. The latter is added by the story-tellers employed by the Bad Lands Department of Parks and Recreation. To be sure, such a belief is based on good evidence, but it remains theory, not incontestable fact. There are still large problems to be sorted out over the theory of evolution, problems that make the debate between the creationists and evolutionists something everyone should see. Having witnessed a few debates between the so-called Scientific Creationists and various scientists, it was always interesting to see the frustration the scientists had trying to respond to the creationist's questions. It was as if suddenly they had an unruly, but knowledgeable student who dared to question the professor s authority. Successful kibitzing, from a creationist or otherwise, is always fun to watch. It, as well, provides an important social function. It helps us to not get too carried away with our view of who holds the Truth.

Demea: I must agree with Cleanthes. Although I have been defending the use of religious vocabulary, both evolutionary and creationist accounts of history are equally oppressive and arbitrary. They both assume that reality has an essence to which descriptions of it can correspond. Postmodernists no longer believe this for a variety of reasons, for example, paradigm shifts in ALL AREAS OF science (not just physics), the advent of quantum mechanics, and Godel's incompleteness theorem. Even within the systems of science and mathematics it is recognized that the ideal of complete, unified, and consistent knowledge is an Enlightenment fantasy - which yields little in terms of performativity.

Philo (interrupting timidly): ...Yes, but you miss the importance of my distinction between theoretical and local knowledge...

Demea: Hold on a minute Philo - as for your precious Albertosaurus, Cleanthes is quite right - what we have are a pile of bones, not a transparently objective account of millions of years - no definitive once-and-for-all proof of the way things "really are." We have a narrative, which isn't any better than what we've got in the Bible. Humanists and Christians are equally deluded; they both claim to describe the essence of reality when it clearly doesn't have one. Both narratives serve a purpose, however, and (as I have shown) those purposes are different. One tries to control and predict the physical world, while the other attributes meaning to human existence. We don't need to completely do away with scientific or religious vocabularies - they are both useful. We must, however, eradicate the discourse of absolute TRUTH, which is the source of all social oppression.

The notion of any sort of absolute TRUTH is precisely the problem - this is why my arguments will not appeal to the "vulgar masses," as Philo so poetically describes non-postmodernists. The "vulgar masses" are uneducated AND they are silenced when they question the truth structures to which they are subjected. They have been brainwashed into believing that reality has an essence to which their descriptions can correspond. They have been brought up to worship scientists and doctors because these people have so much power within our society. Some have been raised Christian, Islamic, or Jewish. Not surprisingly, many god- and science-worshiping people are racist, classist, homophobic, intolerant, self-righteous, and hateful. This is so because they adhere to rigid (but unjustified) truth structures (scientific, religious, or moral), which they are not free to question or ignore. Any system which incorporates rigid truth structures (basically any social system) is terroristic. One who questions them is either silenced or gives his consent to its claims - not because he has been refuted, but because he has been threatened with the punishment of being silenced altogether.⁽²⁾

Philo: But surely they are bones of something! And thus evidence of something! What sort of a world would we live in if everyone went about totally ignoring the reports of their senses? In an insane asylum, perhaps!

Demea (waving aside Philo's interjection à la Camille Paglia): As a postmodern revolutionary I advocate resisting those who would impose their rigid and unjustifiable truth structures on me or anyone else, be they religious, moral, or scientific. Truth is an idea that must be eliminated - the answer is education, education, education. We need to show people that scientific theories do not "correspond" to the way the world "really is" - all they can do is cohere with a given discourse or theory, which may change over time. Likewise we need to question the authority of those who wrote the 10 Commandments or those who enforce bizarre local customs like compulsory clitorectomies. Such beliefs are simply WRONG - not morally wrong, but factually wrong; based on ungrounded and unjustifiable truth structures. Only when people are free to question these truth structures, can we be free from the Hitlers and David Dukes of the world who would tell us that Blacks, Jews, and women are inferior, that religious people are stupid, and that science and mathematics are the only worthwhile human activities.

Philo: Such a volley of arguments! I feel like the Spartans at Thermopylae, defending the narrow pass of unbelief against the Persian hordes, the sky black with arrows. But I prefer to fight in the shade.⁽³⁾

First, let me brush back Cleanthes' skirmishers. You're absolutely right that showing Creationism to be false is not logically equivalent to defeating Christianity. I never dreamed that it was. However, if I might further my cause by kicking out one of the many foundation stones of the Christian world view, I can at least force believers to move from a literal to a figurative interpretation of their holy book, thus undermining the solidity of this foundation. As far as unruly creationists in the classroom go, I again am forced to agree: they are indeed the source of much entertainment. Bring them on, I say, to amuse us in our idle hours when we are too weary to think seriously.

Cleanthes: All I can say Philo, is that I think you are somewhat misinformed about what makes up the foundations stones of the Christian world view. I would say that today most Christians find Christianity compatible with the theory of evolution - the Catholic theologian Teilhard de Chardin is perhaps this century's most notable example. And remember, evolutionists have come up with some zingers too. One example is the so-called, "hopeful monster," theory. To explain the sudden jump in transitional forms, one scientist postulated that one day a reptilian just gave birth to a bird!

Philo: Yes, but let's finally lay aside our empirical eggs and evolve beyond such questions. I feel forced to now repel the wild assault of Demea's postmodern charioteers, whose battle strategy is all the more dangerous thanks to its general lack of foresight and coherence. First, you say that the point of religious language is not to describe and predict the physical world, but to give meaning to life. But surely there are checks on what this language can evoke in the service of this mission of signification? If I propose that a beneficent and invisible Lizard God named Osmosius follows me around, licking my ear lasciviously with his long reptilian tongue whenever I behave well, and hissing in fury when I behave badly, surely you would think me mad. Yet it goes without saying that people have all sorts of religious delusions, although usually not as strange as the case of my invisible lizard friend. Needless to say, these delusions are usually shaped by the images and parables of the religious sect to which they claim allegiance.

Demea: I find your "religious belief" no more preposterous than the notion that our Lord Bumba vomited out the cosmos or that the local volcano god is hungry for virgin blood. Surely you realize that there are no checks on signification provided that one can get together enough people to buy into one's particular narrative. Consider that most Americans really believe that Christ ascended into the heavens and is the offspring of a virgin birth. Madness is nothing but a belief system that does not conform to the dominant narrative. Galileo was thought mad in his day. People of competing religions and ideologies kill each other every day over differences in their belief systems. Are you saying that religiosity is a form of madness? But scientism is no better grounded. The fact is, you can't prove a relation of correspondence between theory and the real world.

Philo (determined to forge on): Secondly, it turns out that we more or less agree on the question of truth - I too have little use for absolute truths (hence my opposition to the greatest absolute of all, religious belief). You seemed to have missed the force of my distinction between grand theory and low-level empirical facts: I would speak of truth in the "absolute" sense (if at all) only when speaking of clear and presents facts, not theory. Further, you say that things like the Ten Commandments and the morality of compulsory clitorectomies are factually wrong. But how can you say this unless you believe in a clear distinction (much clearer than any I believe in, by the way) between theory (which you distrust) and empirical perceptions unpolluted by theoretical constructs? Aren't they to some degree intertwined? Have you become a phenomenologist sunk deep in the epoché?

Demea: Not at all! You falsely assume that there are transparent facts that require no interpretation. But even notions like "things fall down when you drop them" are only "facts" because there's so much solidarity of opinion on the subject that we trick ourselves into believing that they are transparently true, that they don't require a linguistic lense through which we attribute meaning to them. This is an illusion. All truth is a function of language, and thus of interpretation. It used to be thought that men were smarter than women and that the sun went around the Earth. But these so-called "facts" are now considered false, and have been replaced by other facts that work better for our current purposes.

Philo: Ah, so in essence we agree that theory and fact are intertwined. In any case, my last point is perhaps the most telling: I was astonished by your pronouncement that truth "must be eliminated": I thought I heard in the background the muffled thumping of jackboots on the pavement, the click-clack of railcars en route to death camps. Is it absolutely true that the Truth must be eliminated? And that those who refuse to accept this must be liquidated? Even I am willing to extend more charity to those living in darkness than you are, preferring gentle suasion to inflammatory rhetoric. Some of your wild charioteers, hungry for blood, appear to have turned their steeds around and started attacking their own troops.

Demea: I admit that I let myself get a bit carried away. It's just that I feel that true democracy will be impossible until we adopt a radically postmodern world view that dispenses with all unjustifiable truth structures.

Cleanthes: I think we need to stand back and refocus what is at stake here: what is it that we are in disagreement? I think, Demea and Philo, that you both agree that our philosophical evolution has brought us to the place where strong claims to truth and objectivity are not only suspicious looking characters, but perhaps even linguistic phantoms induced by the old magician Plato. Although some would still take the three of us to task over this, at least we share this position. So far so good. But then where does this really leave the status of religious belief?

And it is here I'm a bit mystified with you Philo. You seem level-headed in most musings (especially when we speak of Athenian heroes and villains). Yet, when we turn to the status of religious belief, you seem to think that such belief must stand up to the old standard the three of us have left behind in the brashness of our youth. The question is, how do we come to evaluate the sense of someone's Weltaunschuung? How the three of us respond to this would be most telling. And I think that if you hold true to unbiased assessment, Philo, you may admit that while you find religious belief to be outside of your own sentiment, there is little justification to rule it out in its entirety. In a world that is either postmodernist or high modernist, religious belief merits at least provisional inclusion.

Philo: Yet if we live in a High Modernist world, then we are obliged to take the poet seriously:

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.

And yes, I am forced to admit that my sentiments move me toward lacking all conviction, to swim madly away from the blood-dimmed tide of anarchic Weltanschauungen, including religious fundamentalism, that is drowning the Western logos as we speak. Yet I would never want to defend reason as the ground of our most general systems of belief, whether they're noble or banal. Reason is a slave to greater internal powers, of which we are all too often only dimly aware.

But the key point here is that our sentiments are not arbitrary collections of whims, but indicators of how the world is, and of our place in that world. I admit that I cannot reconcile the mere anarchy of a world full of troubles with the notion of a benevolent creator Deity. This is not a logical dilemma: our fundamental way of being in the world conflicts with the sublimely ridiculous narratives given us by the great monotheistic traditions. In short, Epicurus was right: if evil exists, then God must either will it (in which case he's evil himself), or be powerless to stop it (in which case he's not really a god at all, but at best a sort of super-human cosmic engineer).

Cleanthes: My dear Philo! Such oratory skill exemplified with such humility! "Swimming away from bloody tides!" My head, I fear, is beginning to spin, trapped in its own whirlpool of demands and challenges brought by a formidable foe!

But in all honesty, I am as one who has come to play dice on the marble stone steps with an opponent intent upon upsetting the Coliseum with a manly tournament of chariot races. You've come to fight the lions - this lustful desire is not necessarily wrong - it is just bad taste!

But lion fighting you are - where both man and beast have no choice but to do battle or die. And yet our challenge, those of us pitiful mortals who believe, is not to defeat man or beast in violent defense and offence, but merely to speak, if asked, of why we believe what we do.

As believers we are justified in our beliefs. As long as we respect the Republic, do no injustice to the pagans (such as you), and live in peace with our fellow-citizens, we do not transgress any rules of musings. Believe your own dreams and delights - and I will not demand of you proof. I will simply try to understand how you think, with all its most complex meanderings and subtleties. For it is here, in the labyrinth in your most noble and intricate thought, where I will find meaning.⁽⁴⁾ How such thought corresponds to "the real world" is a demand more fanciful than the cherished metaphysic of the most imaginative of believers.

Demea: Yes Philo, come now, be reasonable. How can our sentiments possibly reflect the way the world really is, or indicate our place in it? Obviously the world is not any particular way. It's plastic, lacking an essence. The only thing human beings can do is describe it, and more often than not we can do this usefully in more than one way. We cannot seize its essence with our sentiments any more than with our logic or with our science. In any case, sentiments are the guiding light of the religious narratives you so haughtily repulse, which explains their timeless appeal in the face of current narratives that appear to be so much more useful. As for religious narratives conflicting with our fundamental way of being in the world, I have only this to say: in a world without essence, conflict in and between our world-views is bound to arise. Inconsistency and incompleteness is a basic human trait: we must learn to accept that. These are also features of all mathematical systems. Just ask Godel.

Now certainly I agree that some descriptions of the world work better than others for some purposes, and so your preference for the scientific narrative when applied to SOME problems is perfectly reasonable, and not arbitrary at all. I find your position so reasonable that I think faith healers who withhold necessary medical treatment from ill children in favor of prayers should be drawn, quartered and hanged. This position is absurd - prayer just doesn't combat disease as effectively as Western medicine. To withhold medical treatment is to harm the child, which we have (arbitrarily) agreed is wrong. On the other hand, the "sublimely ridiculous narratives" of the worlds' religions do their job, which is to infuse our life-experience with hope and meaning, although they don't cure disease. They are useful too, but not always more useful than other narratives for every purpose.

Philo:You rascals! You're trying to befuddle my brain with images of sweaty Amazon warriors and faith healers practicing their absurdities on the vulgar. Yet my challenge remains, unanswered - how do you theists account for the existence of evil? Both logic and sentiment suggest a discrete number of answers: either this supposed "evil" doesn't really exist, and is nothing more than the product of human thought; or the Deity has given us free will to practice good and evil as we see fit; or the Deity's plans for the cosmos are far too sublime for we poor mortals to comprehend them. Which is it, friends? Come now, don't play the politician and answer a simple question with a torrent of misleading rhetoric.

Demea: First, how dare you call me a theist? I only claim that religious meta-narratives are as defensible as scientific ones in terms of their correspondence to the essence of reality. I don't claim that God exists or that dinosaurs never roamed the earth. Second, it seems to me that you are making inappropriate demands for consistency in religious world-views. It is a well-known fact that most religions abound with internal contradictions, but secular world-views are equally inconsistent, especially those inspired by modern physics. Extremely useful mathematical descriptions of the world, like: "anti-matter moves backwards through time," "electrons travel from point A to point B without crossing the space in between," and "time slows down at speeds approaching light," do not cohere with our ordinary experience. Nevertheless, the fact that we cannot translate these ideas into our linear, visual world view, in no way suggests that we shouldn't take them seriously. And obviously we do. But very few of us understand them. Some of us may be able to manipulate the mathematics that suggest them. But to wrap one's mind around modern physics is impossible, even for a physicist. Why should we expect religious descriptions of the world to cohere better with our expectations than physical and mathematical descriptions? The problem of inconsistency in religion in general and that of evil in particular is completely irrelevant to our discussion. Who are we, the lowly faithful (religious zealots and physics students) to understand the mind of God- or the movement of an electron for that matter? To follow the Lord or to take cutting edge-physical descriptions of subatomic matter seriously, one must only have faith. Remember, it's when Eve ate of the forbidden fruit of KNOWLEDGE that everything went to hell. Best not to ask questions.

Cleanthes: "Best not to ask questions"? I'm afraid Demea that this is a bit much to ask - isn't this, in fact, where problems begin between believer and nonbeliever? Reducing faith to fideism understandably rankles the pagan. In our own, fast fading century, this was brought to a head by the Fundamentalists who were embarrassed at the Scope's Trial. Believing that higher learning and science were antagonistic to religious belief, Fundamentalists turned the meaning of faith into an inward religious experience which no philosophy or science could harm. But by doing so, they made their belief epistemologically irrelevant. If one makes a claim that cannot be falsified, even hypothetically, then the belief is of little meaning to anyone. The one holding the belief may feel himself or herself bound to the belief (due to its strong experiential character), but she or he should keep quiet about it.

And so I am sympathetic to Philo's question. As a believer, what ever that means, at least it means that one must always ask - as long as it is remembered there may not always be an answer. The "problem of evil" is such a question. If the gods are all good, and all powerful, then why do they allow evil? Righteous Job asked such a question. Indeed, all creation has asked it too - believer and unbeliever alike. But it is important to remember that whether on the side of the gods or not, there are no easy answers. Philo may think this is a problem for us. Not so. For Philo, where does such a question arise in your materialist informed brain (note my able foe: brain not mind or soul)? That is, from whence does evil arise? Do you believe there is evil out there in the world? Or perhaps you should admit that the gods have written their laws upon your heart? And now your conscience condemns you?!

Demea: Fundamentalist Christians embarrassed? That's a new one. Usually they're just embarrassing! Clearly, from an empirical point of view, religious claims can be neither true nor false because they are neither verifiable nor falsifiable. This may make their belief epistemologically irrelevant to philosophers, but not to the faithful, and certainly not to those who have had a meaningful religious experience. And why should they keep their beliefs to themselves? Are they not useful to some people for some purposes?

My dear Cleanthes - what about the story of the FALL which is clearly an attempt to account for evil in the world. Jews and Christians claim that suffering is our fault. We deserve it. We are born guilty because of the fall, which is why we need to be redeemed. The problem of evil is really a non-issue for Jews and Christians. Now it may be a problem for other religions, but not ones that concern us here. Also, many Christians think that bad things happen to good people because our suffering here on earth is insignificant compared to the rewards that await us in heaven. But such rewards can only be understood in terms of faith and cannot be rationally grasped.

Philo: Cleanthes, you overestimate the power of the gods, just as you underestimate that of alliteration. But it appears that you've joined with the spirit of common sense and I in a holy trinity of clear thinking against Demea's appeal to blind faith. Shall we philosophers go down on our knees and abandon our reason, our experience, and our more level-headed emotions in favor of a whole train of monkish virtues admired by gloomy, hair-brained enthusiasts, which, as someone once said, may admitted into religious calendars, but are rightly rejected by all people of good sense? Or should we stand up like men and not be afraid to ask the questions that life puts before us? In short, Demea, are you not trapped inside a divine paradigm? I offer you the key to unlock the doors of your deistic misperceptions. Please take it, and sapere aude - dare to know.

Demea: So you, Philo, refuse to entertain cutting edge theories in physics because they contradict your reason, judgment, and good sense, making you question everything you ever took for granted to be true? I rather doubt it. You're as faithful to the priests of science as any zealot is to religious dogma. You have no more insight into these matters than you do into the supposed mind of God. Yet you believe, as do most people, including myself. My point is this: we routinely have faith in notions that contradict many of our beliefs. On this point at least, religious people are no different than the most rigorously scientific people in our community. Philo, no one is asking you to fall to your knees and find Jesus, only to recognize the fact that His existence can't be falsified - although it could, one day, be verified. In any case, stand up like a man, storm about, flex your pecs and ask the questions about modern physics, but you'll never understand the answers. No one does. Modern physics flies in the face of everything we hold to be self-evident. Theologians claim the same scenario for explanations of our suffering here on earth - it is beyond our grasp to understand the ways of God. To be religious one must have faith, period. As for the problem of evil, for my part, I'll sit down like a lady, cross my legs and paint my nails. And then I think I'll yawn. Can anything epistemologically relevant be said about claims that are neither true nor false?

Cleanthes (continuing with Demea's assault on Philo): Philo, my dear young nimble Greek lad, do you really think now that all "evil" is but "natural evil" - produced by volcanoes, earthquakes, and hurricanes? Ah, I see you include the capacity for humans to do bad things to others, but are all the human monsters, such as the Hitlers, Stalins, and Caligula "bad"? After watching Schindler's List do you feel that such Nazi's were merely naughty? Maybe really nasty? But if you say "evil" - which they most certainly were - then how do you account for such a deep penetrating sensation of revulsion? Evolutionarily conditioned? Or do you now sense the law of the gods awakening in your bowels?

And Demea (while you both are still catching your breath), about the faithful keeping their beliefs privatized - yes, they should keep them such. If no information or state of affairs can count against their beliefs, then, logically, no state of affairs count for their beliefs. They are still within their rights to hold to such beliefs, but not when it comes to deciding matters in a public forum. For example, their belief that we should pray a Christian prayer in the classroom as our national moral and spiritual obligation - this belief, based on "faith", is no different than the madman who claims to be divinely inspired. In other words, their silence is required because believers have all sorts of ethical beliefs that supposedly inform their lives. Again, I do not wish to take away this right. But the rest of us are not interested about an "ethic" that comes from a wider view of the world that allows for no circumstances to count against their beliefs.

Demea: I think, Cleanthes that describing Hitler or Stalin as "really bad," "super-naughty," or "evil", comes down to a matter of taste, and is of little relevance to our discussion. As for your second point, I entirely agree. This is why we (attempt to) maintain a division between church and state in the US. When you said religious people ought to "keep their beliefs to themselves", I misunderstood what you meant.

Cleanthes: Whether these sorts of guys were evil or just bad is relevant to the discussion. That is, if all that there is, is matter, then all I can really say about guys like this is that are just bad people - a little worse than naughty. If so, my revulsion and feelings of horror, being privy to their actions, is really no different than the feeling I have when liver and turnips are put on my dinner plate - a sort of aesthetic, consistent with evolutionary materialism.

Others, however, recognizing that these actions are indicative of something more repugnant and horrific, ask how they can have such a reaction if it is only a matter of taste, as you put it. These same people believe that they "feel" such revulsion because of the inner law written on their hearts; a "conscience", if you will, that condemns their behavior. This is exactly what Philo doesn't have. After seeing what such moral monsters do, he is taken back in horror. Trouble is, such a reaction isn't consistent with the materialist limitations he has placed on himself. Am I not right Philo? Will you now give the gods their due? Shall I run for the high priest at the temple to bring the anointing water?

Philo:My dear Cleanthes, I am no simple materialist, and I do have a conscience. Rather, I'm a sceptic: I bracket claims to knowledge about things we can't possibly know. However, I feel no compunction in calling mass murderers "evil", if the term is to have any meaning at all. And yes, evil is clearly a quantum leap away from things that merely offend my taste. But our sense of the utter evil of the mass murderer's actions doesn't require any metaphysical guarantee in the structure of reality or in a moral law prescribed by the Deity and recorded on some ancient stone tablets. We can "feel" moral evil just as we can feel anything else (for I would claim that such a conclusion cannot be result of some reasoning process). If our moral concepts refer to the world in some significant way, then evil exists. And this, I say once again, is a powerful barrier to religious belief, assuming that our idea of God is of a supremely good, all-knowing, all-powerful entity (an idea that I don't believe we can avoid if we see the Deity as an object of worship).

Demea: Philo is right about one thing. Whether or not our notion of evil is a matter of taste and social conditioning (as I suggest) or a physical sensation (as Philo believes) the existence or illusion of evil tells us nothing about the metaphysical structure of reality. But Philo, I do disagree with the assertion that the deity must be all-good in order to merit the worship of the faithful. The Jewish and Christian deity has shown arbitrary preferences among his people, passed out brutally harsh punishments, even to the most deserving of mercy, and has routinely committed genocide throughout the ages. Even if a gifted theologian could argue that God is good and that every human being is born guilty, deserving punishment for the misdeeds of our ancestral mother, no one can persuade me that He is very nice. To the contrary. And it is precisely God's intolerance for human nature and behavior that persuades the faithful to worship and fear Him, for if they don't, God only knows what He is capable of. An all-powerful, merciless deity is as much or more deserving of worship than an all-good, all-forgiving God...

Sarah to Bob: At this point the tape in my pocket recorder ran out. However, the debate soon ended, the interlocutors going their separate ways, leaving the issue of the existence and nature of God unsettled. We'll have to have a go at it ourselves one day, but hopefully with more success at the end of our endeavors than that achieved by my three friends.